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Advice at the Start of a New Year
I’ve been thinking of a lovely poem by David Gate that goes:
I do not plan to start anew
in January.
That is for spring.
This is the night in the dead of winter
where I pare back excess
to reach the bones of my life
so when I am reborn
I am reborn as only
my most essential nature.
The beauty of winter is how it encourages us to ‘pare back’ and also to turn inward. To burrow into ourselves and connect with all we find there. It’s a time for excavating the quieter, interior life which every single one of us contains — the life we often struggle to hear and honor against a loud, loud world — chronically distracting us and directing our focus to the surface of things; the petals more than the roots.
The new calendar year is less about taking action and more about taking stock.
The changes we seek for ourselves, when we commit to things like New Years’ resolutions, begin as intentions. Just as the fruit we pluck from the tree began as a seed.
It is valuable for us not to hit the ground running but to slow down instead and investigate why we’re seeking the changes or improvements to our…